678 



OBITUARIES, FOREIGN. (DOLLING ER.) 



played at the Francais. The last work of his life was 

 to assist Sardou in the composition of the '* Belle- 

 Maman," which was the great success of the season 

 when brought out at the Gymnase Theatre in 1888. 

 Dcslandes, as director of the Vaudeville Theatre for 

 fifteen years, chose his pieces with rare discrimination, 

 mounted them with care, and was so successful in de- 

 veloping dramatic talents, that his troupe was at one 

 time composed entirely of stars, and though these were 

 drafted off, one after another, to the Theatre-Francais, 

 even at the time of his death it was the second com- 

 pany in France. 



Dollinger, Ignaz, a German theologian, born in Bam- 

 berg, Feb. 28, 1799 ; died in Munich, Jan. 10, 1890. 

 He was the son of a celebrated Professor of Anatomy 

 and Physiology. Leaving the Wurzburg Gymnasium 

 at the age of seventeen with his mind well equipped 

 with knowledge of the ancient and modem languages 

 and the elements of the sciences, he chose the study 

 ot theology, which he pursued at the universities of 

 Wurzburg and Bamberg. Without taking his doctor's 

 degree, he was ordained priest in 1822 and accepted 

 a chaplaincy, which he unwillingly resigned when, 

 through his father's influence, he was appointed Pro- 

 fessor of Church History and Canon Law at the As- 

 chaffenburg Lyceum in' 1823. Mohler's work on early 

 Christianity first opened before his mind the ideal of 

 a purified Church. A tract written to prove the ac- 

 ceptance in the first three centuries of the dogma of 

 the real presence in the eucharist attracted the atten- 

 tion of Catholic scholars and gained for him in 1826 

 the doctorate from the Landshut theological faculty, 

 and when in the same year that university was re- 

 moved to Munich, Dollinger was invited to become 

 an extraordinary professor, and in the very next year 

 was made regular Professor of Church History and 

 Ecclesiastical Law. In 1828 he published a continua- 

 tion of Hortig's " History of the Church," bringing it 

 down from the time of the Reformation to 1789. The 

 doctrine of a purely spiritual Church taught by the 

 Abbe" Lamennais and Count Montalembert created a 

 &tir in Munich as in other Catholic centers in Europe, 

 and Dollinger was influenced, but of all the younger 

 Munich theologians he was the least carried away. 

 Hortig's work he revised and remodeled into a " Man- 

 ual of Church History" (1834-'35) and a " Text-book 

 of the History of the Christian Church " (1836-'38). 

 Mohler's work on the dogmatic differences between Ca- 

 tholicism and Protestantism, which appeared in 1832, 

 gave birth to a mass of controversial literature, and 

 when Ranke published his " History of the Reforma- 

 tion " Dollinger resolved to answer it. His work, 

 which was published in three volumes in 1846-'48, 

 shocked all Protestants by its revelations of the hid- 

 den springs, the base motives, political huckstering, 

 and secret intrigues that influenced the development 

 of the Lutheran doctrine and polity. In 1844- '45 he 

 was rector of the university, and lectured to the stu- 

 dents on u Error, Doubt, and Truth." He also rep- 

 resented the university in the Bavarian Diet; but 

 when the Ultramontanists triumphed over the Gorres 

 group in the exciting period of 1847-'48 he lost his seat 

 in the Legislature with his professorship, although he 

 had been advanced by the King to the dignities of dean 

 of the chapter and court chaplain. He entered the 

 Frankfort Parliament, and as chief of the Catholic 

 section of the Great German party he opposed the re- 

 turn of the Jesuits and proposed an article making 

 the Catholic and Protestant Churches politically inde- 

 pendent of the state, which was afterward incorpo- 

 rated in the Prussian Constitution, but stricken out 

 during the CuUurkampf. This article, which sub- 

 jected Dollinger to much criticism, he explained and 

 defended in a pamphlet published anonymously in 

 Frankfort in 1848. In the first assembly of the Ger- 

 man Catholic Union at Mayence he pleaded for a 

 greater national independence of the German Church, 

 and in the meeting of the bishops at Wurzburg he 

 successfully justified his position but did not remove 

 the distrust that he had awakened at Rome. He left 

 the Catholic Union in 1850, and at the same time 



broke off all relations with Ultramontanism. In that 

 year appeared his gloomy character study, " Luther." 

 On Dec. 24, 1849, King Maximilian restored to 



the 



him. In 1853 he published a book to prove that 

 not Kallistus, but his anti-Pope Hippolytus was 

 the author of the recently discovered " Philoso- 

 phoumena." He began also to print a history of 

 the sects ^and heresies of the middle ayes, but stopped 

 the publication to collect fuller materials. He ap- 

 plied himself to a great work on the religious history 

 of mankind, and in 1858 created a sensation in the 

 world of letters by the first volume on u Paganism 

 and Judaism as the Vestibule of Christianity," Which 

 was followed in 1860 by " Christianity and the Church 

 at the Time of their Foundation." lie did not con- 

 tinue the work as he intended, with a history of the 

 Papacy, for in his researches he found that the ac- 

 cepted history and the development of the Church 

 had been largely affected by falsified records and 

 forged documents. In 1861 he offended the Ultra- 

 montanes by his public lectures in Munich, and was 

 unable to cast off the odium by his apology, printed 

 under the title of " Church and Churches, Papacy and 

 the Papal State." The Germanicans were not pleased 

 with his opening address at an assembly of Catholic 

 scholars in Munich in 1863, and yet it was condemned 

 in the syllabus of 1864. His book on ''Legends of 

 Mediaeval Popes" increased the dislike of the Jesuit 

 theologians, represented in Germany by the JNew 

 Scholastic school. In anonymous articles Dollinger 

 showed that the syllabus had no dogmatic authority. 

 The antagonism between the Munich school headed 

 by Dollinger and the Roman ecclesiastics became 

 more and more pronounced. In 1867 he wrote against 

 the canonization of Peter Arbues and glorification of 

 the Inquisition. When the Vatican Council was sum- 

 moned, Germany was represented only by New Scho- 

 lastics until Cardinal Schwarzenburg objected. Dol- 

 linger was not called, on the pretext that he would 

 refuse to attend. When the object of the Council, 

 the adoption of the dogma of Papal infallibility, be- 

 came known, he summoned all his intellectual powers 

 to combat the idea. His professorial position, which 

 he had desired to give up some time before in order 

 to enter the lists openly, obliged him to preserve the 

 cloak of anonymity ; yet the force of his style and the 

 immense learning displayed in his polemical articles 

 and in the book that he wrote with some help from 

 Prof. Johannes Huber, entitled " Der Pabst und der 

 Concil von Janus " (1860), left no one in doubt as to 

 their authorship. While the bishops who voted 

 ajrainst the dogma in the Council humbly submitted, 

 Dollinger remained firm against every persuasion, 

 though he was unable to get^, body of Catholic schol- 

 ars to join him in an open declaration ot resistance in 

 August, 1870. He declared that neither as a Chris- 

 tian, as a theologian, as a student of history, nor as 

 a citizen could he accept the dogma, and in April, 

 1871, he was excommunicated by Archbishop Scherr. 

 Dollinger applied to the Bavarian ministry for a place 

 of worship for those who were shut out from the fold 

 of the Church because they could not subscribe to the 

 new dogma and summoned a congress of Old Catho- 

 lics, in which he opposed for a moment the forma- 

 tion of a separate church organization ; but he soon 

 recognized the necessities of the position, and ap- 

 proved the efforts of the younger men who did the 

 active work in the movement without formally join- 

 ing the Old Catholic community, to which he' had 

 given birth. In 1872 he delivered lectures " On Re- 

 uniting the Christian Churches," which were printed 

 in 1888. In 1873 he succeeded Liebig as President of 

 the Royal Academy of Science, and once or twice a 

 vear he delivered addresses which have been pub- 

 lished in two volumes (1888-'89). He gave himself up 

 wholly to study, remaining physically and mentally 

 vigorous to the end of his days, but published no other 

 important work. 



